Bioengineering and Biotechnology Approaches in Cardiovascular Sciences

The heart is one of the most complex and hardworking organs of the human body, wondrously choreographed to contract, conduct, and pump the blood through the vascular system, to provide fuel for all the vital functions. Salvage and repair of the human heart has been a long sought goal and ambition of many researchers, given its notorious incapacity to regenerate following injury or disease. Cardiovascular regenerative medicine, characterized by a unique converging of scientific fields in biology, physical sciences, and bioengineering, have emerged as one of the most promising field of cardiovascular research. The proper incorporation and integration of diverse bioengineering-biotech tools into such tissue regenerative endeavors could lead to off-the-shelf bioartificial tissues/organs that are suitable for new drug discovery, deciphering the mechanism of diseases, or therapeutic approaches. Therefore, ever-growing attention has been given to the advancement of various bioengineering-biotech principles and their implementation in cardiac remuscularization therapies.

This Research Topic aims to focus on the most recent advancements in the development of advanced bioengineering and biotechnological tools and their use in cardiovascular regenerative medicine, both as biomimetic platforms for in vitro disease modeling or drug screening, and for therapeutic applications in vivo.

This article collection will cover a spectrum of cardiovascular research subjects including (but not limited to):
 Engineered cell and cell products for cardiac repair;
 Biomaterial systems for in vitro or in vivo regenerative therapies;
 Bioengineered culture systems for cardiovascular disease modeling
 Advanced technologies to evaluate engineered tissues
 Engineered scaffolds for controlled drug delivery and release; and
 Cardiac cell-ECM interactions.